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All you need is a text editor and a text-oriented tool for Flash to get a Flash site going.

There are lots of tools for Flash-compatible SWF files out there besides Flash. Flex is one. HaXe is another. Laszlo Systems has a proprietary product and an open version called Open Laszlo, which IIRC is built on Java. There are probably more I'm forgetting.

HaXe is its own language from the guy who designed the Neko VM. It run on the Neko runtime, and it targets Neko, Javascript browser DOM with its own Ajax libraries, or Flash. I haven't done anything huge with it, but it was pretty quick to pick up for a couple of small projects.

There are also graphical Flash authoring tools besides Flash and Dreamweaver. They range from Swish Max which is meant to be a full Flash replacement for most people down to specialized things like animated banner creators and photo gallery creators. There's also a lot of royalty-free and even some Open Source components you can download and reuse.

Flash isn't as open as JavaScript and HTML, and it is dominated by one company. It's not exactly useful only to people who buy Flash, though.

There is. It's called OpenLazslo: http://www.laszlosystems.com/products/openlaszlo.

And for the record, the Flex SDK framework is free so anyone can download it and build other people's apps Flex apps and their own Flex apps without the IDE, and it is also open-source, so anyone can contribute to make it better.

If you are just learning the framework, though, having a well-planned and thought out workflow already designed for you is only going to speed up your efforts if you already know another language. That's what an IDE is for, and worth a 30-day free trial and then a license if you need to use it to put bread on the table. If you are a masochist, go ahead and learn it without the IDE. If you are a professional, you shouldn't have any problem getting used to it.

Now if Adobe could just find a way to open-source the flash player....still looking for 64-bit on that one guys.

It's completely dependent on what language I'm coding in.

When I was coding in PHP... php.net was an absolute godsend of being both a reference to all the functions and objects and a repository of user's experiences and tips for the items... almost all of my php issues were solved via that site.

When I've been doing Javascript code (which isn't a huge amount I'll admit), then I've found W3School's reference pages to be invaluable.

Now that I'm doing my coding in the open source language Laszlo I've found their included documentation that comes with the developer install (web based and with live examples to tinker with), and the community coding forums to be an enormous help, and have made learning and getting a lot out of this language really not that hard.

I really think that trying to localise coding support isn't going to work... the coders should just make use of the best forums and resources for the language they're using. Each time I have to use a new language I have a new folder in my bookmarks for reference pages and forums for that language that I find on the web... you find almost everything you need that way really.

And know how to use Google damn well!

It doesn't have to be Java.

http://www.curl.com/

http://www.laszlosystems.com/

An OpenLaszlo app behaves essentially like an Ajax app; data requests are made for XML data (or media) in the background, and the user interface is presented as a seamless window-system style desktop app.

Simple Example

Flex was inspired by Laszlo (in spite of the fact that Tim O'Reilly is confused and mistakenly thinks it's the other way around).

OpenLaszlo is an excellent open source web programming language based on XML and JavaScript. Your class declarations, object instantiations and configuration constraints are all defined in XML, with JavaScript expressions in attributes and JavaScript methods in text content.

OpenLaszlo strikes an elegant balance between XML and JavaScript, so Laszlo code is quite clean and easy to read and maintain. IBM has developed an Eclipse IDE plug-in for creating Laszlo applications with drag-and-drop and XML outline editors.

You can see for yourself how easy it is to develop interactive graphical web applications in XML+JavaScript with OpenLaszlo: Laszlo in 10 minutes. You can actually see, modify and run Laszlo scripts over the web, to learn how it works.

If you like Laszlo and want to learn more, then you can download the entire Laszlo source code, documentation and examples for free, and start developing your own Laszlo applications, without paying any exhorbinant licensing fees like Flex requires (on the order of $12,000 per server).

-Don

Curl

Laszlo

Flex

Create rich client apps with the DOM

Rich Cients ORG

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http://www.laszlosystems.com/ http://www.openlaszlo.com/

XSLT is a weak, horrible programming language, which gives other XML based programming langauges a bad name. It's only useful for performing simple XML text transformations, but not for programming interactive networked XML data driven graphical user interfaces, which OpenLaszlo is great at.

OpenLaszlo is an excellent open source web programming language based on XML and JavaScript. Your class declarations, object instantiations and configuration constraints are all defined in XML, with JavaScript expressions in attributes and JavaScript methods in text content.

OpenLaszlo strikes an elegant balance between XML and JavaScript, so Laszlo code is quite clean and easy to read and maintain. IBM has developed an Eclipse IDE plug-in for creating Laszlo applications with drag-and-drop and XML outline editors.

You can see for yourself how easy it is to develop interactive graphical web applications in XML+JavaScript with OpenLaszlo: Laszlo in 10 minutes. You can actually see, modify and run Laszlo scripts over the web, to learn how it works.

-Don

Here's a simple example of a Laszlo gui for browsing and ordering stuff from Amazon via their web services API:

Blueprint Music

Here's the source code.

-Don

Here's a simple example of a Laszlo gui for browsing and ordering stuff from Amazon via their web services API:

Blueprint Music

Here's the source code.

-Don

I said they were supportive. Discussions on mailing lists, blog entries, that sort of thing. Encouraging.

Please note that Macromedia is being supportive to their own developer community. Also every tool (open source or not) that has a chance to provide added value to their own platform while not being a competitive threat to their own product line is likely to get some (little) support as well. That does not even compare to what other companies do, by really embracing the free software / open source movement. IBM offered a couple of dozzens of programs to the open source community (list) one of them being an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for Laszlo. Sun open sourced Star Office, Netbeans and will soon open source Solaris. Laszlo Systems open sourced their RIA Platform (OpenLaszlo). These and others are companies being supportive to the open source community. Macromedia however is not one of these companies. On a greed scale they would be somewhere very close to Microsoft.

Flash (which, btw, costs half of what you said)

I don't know where you live but in Germany the half cripple Macromedia Flash MX 2004 costs 694.84 euro (=855.926701 US$) and the full Macromedia Flash MX Professional 2004 costs 973.24 euro (=1,198.868952 US$).

If you don't like it -- don't buy it.

You can bet I won't. I already told about OpenLaszlo. That is what I would use, should I ever consider writing Flash applications again. For now I am a lot better off using SVG and JavaScript for the open source projects to which I contribute. SVG and JavaScript are both open standards while Macromedia's technologies are proprietary. Supporting Macromedia's technologies would help Macromedia more than anybody else, and would surely hurt web standards and interoperability.

IBM already released an open source Eclipse plugin for developing Laszlo applications, on November 18, 2004. Laszlo is open source, and so is the Eclipse tool for developing Laszlo applications.

Does Macromedia actually think they're going to convince open source developers to use Flex, by throwing out an Eclipse plug-in, while still charging $20,000 per cpu for the Flex server software?

IBM and Laszlo are a lot more serious about Open Source and Eclipse than Macromedia/Adobe.

-Don

Well, there's GModeler:
http://www.gskinner.com/gmodeler/app/run.html

I make use of this tool extensively; it's a cross platform UML diagramer with a lot of good functionality. The gskinner.com site itself is an excellently done Flash site. It showcases their technical knowhow, with out the Flash interfering with the content.

Then there's things like the Laszlo Calendar: http://www.laszlosystems.com/lps/sample-apps/calen dar/calendar.lzo?lzt=html
This is a proof of concept only, it's not actually data bound, but it has the capacity to be.

Of course if I mention Laszlo Calendar, I have to mention the other Laszlo demos:
http://www.laszlosystems.com/demos/

Let's not forget Laszlo Mail: http://www.laszlosystems.com/products/modules/mail .php
One of the best web interfaces to mail I've ever seen (sorry, they don't have an actual demo out there for you to look at, but we've met with the Laszlo guys and they've let us play with it, it's very good!)

Once upon a time, I shared the same allergy to Flash that a lot of the /. crowd owns. It is perhaps because early incarnations of Flash were really not good for much more than making an annoying splash intro. Flash as a language (or rather, ActionScript) has come a long long way. The language itself is a robust language supporting a solid OOP environment. Its ability to load content pieces on demand is highly reminiscent of Ajax that everyone is so excited about now, only it's quite a bit more powerful.

You can build a series of movies (swf's) that each perform a discrete function, and use a master movie to bring them together. When you need the calendar (or any other) piece of your application, well, load it. One command and it's placed on the stage, with a loading indicator, while the user gets to continue interacting with the other pieces of the application. You could easily build an entire browser-based OS within Flash, just like a standard OS, with each piece of it being represented by its own 'process' (movie clip), and with all of it having asynchronous data binding to a server-side database. Imagine being able to log into the same OS, with access to all the same applications and data no matter where in the world you went. It's a pipe dream, but it's entirely possible within Flash, only most "serious" developers refuse to acknowledge the possibility.

Good Flash developers have been doing asynchronous applications for several years now, but have suffered an inability to get good market penetration due mostly to the pundits who call out, "What about users who don't have Flash?" referring to that 1% subset of users using, eg, Lynx. The same individuals have no problem, however, relying entirely on CSS to do their formatting, or linking to a PDF (this generalization is brought to you based on my personal experience with such users; of course I'm sure there are purists who would refuse to rely entirely on CSS for their formatting, or who would refuse to place any object on the web that is not part of HTML1.1).

People (developers) developed the allergy when Flash was immature, and have not bothered to reevaluate it as a rich web application interface since. Laszlo is FOSS whose entire purpose is built around building rich asynchronous applications for the web. It provides all of the UI components you need to build an app (and any you created that it didn't provide can be just as easily used). It even does this in a skinnable fashion, so, like Evolution, users could load their own custom skins which would be applied to all of the default elements.

I'm not saying Flash is the be-all and end-all of web goodness. I certainly realize there are pl

Well, there's GModeler:
http://www.gskinner.com/gmodeler/app/run.html

I make use of this tool extensively; it's a cross platform UML diagramer with a lot of good functionality. The gskinner.com site itself is an excellently done Flash site. It showcases their technical knowhow, with out the Flash interfering with the content.

Then there's things like the Laszlo Calendar: http://www.laszlosystems.com/lps/sample-apps/calen dar/calendar.lzo?lzt=html
This is a proof of concept only, it's not actually data bound, but it has the capacity to be.

Of course if I mention Laszlo Calendar, I have to mention the other Laszlo demos:
http://www.laszlosystems.com/demos/

Let's not forget Laszlo Mail: http://www.laszlosystems.com/products/modules/mail .php
One of the best web interfaces to mail I've ever seen (sorry, they don't have an actual demo out there for you to look at, but we've met with the Laszlo guys and they've let us play with it, it's very good!)

Once upon a time, I shared the same allergy to Flash that a lot of the /. crowd owns. It is perhaps because early incarnations of Flash were really not good for much more than making an annoying splash intro. Flash as a language (or rather, ActionScript) has come a long long way. The language itself is a robust language supporting a solid OOP environment. Its ability to load content pieces on demand is highly reminiscent of Ajax that everyone is so excited about now, only it's quite a bit more powerful.

You can build a series of movies (swf's) that each perform a discrete function, and use a master movie to bring them together. When you need the calendar (or any other) piece of your application, well, load it. One command and it's placed on the stage, with a loading indicator, while the user gets to continue interacting with the other pieces of the application. You could easily build an entire browser-based OS within Flash, just like a standard OS, with each piece of it being represented by its own 'process' (movie clip), and with all of it having asynchronous data binding to a server-side database. Imagine being able to log into the same OS, with access to all the same applications and data no matter where in the world you went. It's a pipe dream, but it's entirely possible within Flash, only most "serious" developers refuse to acknowledge the possibility.

Good Flash developers have been doing asynchronous applications for several years now, but have suffered an inability to get good market penetration due mostly to the pundits who call out, "What about users who don't have Flash?" referring to that 1% subset of users using, eg, Lynx. The same individuals have no problem, however, relying entirely on CSS to do their formatting, or linking to a PDF (this generalization is brought to you based on my personal experience with such users; of course I'm sure there are purists who would refuse to rely entirely on CSS for their formatting, or who would refuse to place any object on the web that is not part of HTML1.1).

People (developers) developed the allergy when Flash was immature, and have not bothered to reevaluate it as a rich web application interface since. Laszlo is FOSS whose entire purpose is built around building rich asynchronous applications for the web. It provides all of the UI components you need to build an app (and any you created that it didn't provide can be just as easily used). It even does this in a skinnable fashion, so, like Evolution, users could load their own custom skins which would be applied to all of the default elements.

I'm not saying Flash is the be-all and end-all of web goodness. I certainly realize there are pl

Well, there's GModeler:
http://www.gskinner.com/gmodeler/app/run.html

I make use of this tool extensively; it's a cross platform UML diagramer with a lot of good functionality. The gskinner.com site itself is an excellently done Flash site. It showcases their technical knowhow, with out the Flash interfering with the content.

Then there's things like the Laszlo Calendar: http://www.laszlosystems.com/lps/sample-apps/calen dar/calendar.lzo?lzt=html
This is a proof of concept only, it's not actually data bound, but it has the capacity to be.

Of course if I mention Laszlo Calendar, I have to mention the other Laszlo demos:
http://www.laszlosystems.com/demos/

Let's not forget Laszlo Mail: http://www.laszlosystems.com/products/modules/mail .php
One of the best web interfaces to mail I've ever seen (sorry, they don't have an actual demo out there for you to look at, but we've met with the Laszlo guys and they've let us play with it, it's very good!)

Once upon a time, I shared the same allergy to Flash that a lot of the /. crowd owns. It is perhaps because early incarnations of Flash were really not good for much more than making an annoying splash intro. Flash as a language (or rather, ActionScript) has come a long long way. The language itself is a robust language supporting a solid OOP environment. Its ability to load content pieces on demand is highly reminiscent of Ajax that everyone is so excited about now, only it's quite a bit more powerful.

You can build a series of movies (swf's) that each perform a discrete function, and use a master movie to bring them together. When you need the calendar (or any other) piece of your application, well, load it. One command and it's placed on the stage, with a loading indicator, while the user gets to continue interacting with the other pieces of the application. You could easily build an entire browser-based OS within Flash, just like a standard OS, with each piece of it being represented by its own 'process' (movie clip), and with all of it having asynchronous data binding to a server-side database. Imagine being able to log into the same OS, with access to all the same applications and data no matter where in the world you went. It's a pipe dream, but it's entirely possible within Flash, only most "serious" developers refuse to acknowledge the possibility.

Good Flash developers have been doing asynchronous applications for several years now, but have suffered an inability to get good market penetration due mostly to the pundits who call out, "What about users who don't have Flash?" referring to that 1% subset of users using, eg, Lynx. The same individuals have no problem, however, relying entirely on CSS to do their formatting, or linking to a PDF (this generalization is brought to you based on my personal experience with such users; of course I'm sure there are purists who would refuse to rely entirely on CSS for their formatting, or who would refuse to place any object on the web that is not part of HTML1.1).

People (developers) developed the allergy when Flash was immature, and have not bothered to reevaluate it as a rich web application interface since. Laszlo is FOSS whose entire purpose is built around building rich asynchronous applications for the web. It provides all of the UI components you need to build an app (and any you created that it didn't provide can be just as easily used). It even does this in a skinnable fashion, so, like Evolution, users could load their own custom skins which would be applied to all of the default elements.

I'm not saying Flash is the be-all and end-all of web goodness. I certainly realize there are pl

-Don

ummm... Flash has supported accessibility for disabled users since version 6. Not that it's widely used, of course, but you could say the same thing about section 508 usability for most regular HTML sites too.

As far as converting XML to Flash, you can use something like Flex (expensive, but nice tools and data binding) or Laszlo (free and open source).

Garg

If you liked Flex, you will love Laszlo. Laszlo actually predates Flex. Here is an online Laszlo interpreter for you to try.

If you liked Flex, you will love Laszlo. Laszlo actually predates Flex. Here is an online Laszlo interpreter for you to try.

"Alas, they're a step away from the quasi-declarative "programming" of (D)HTML back to the procedural programming of C and its descendants, not something artsy web "developers" like to hear."

"Artsy" devlopers don't program in the raw to begin with. That's what front end tools are for.

Anyway "artsy" developers use stuff like this to get what they want. (programmed in XML and JS). There's even an Eclipse plugin to help. Maybe one of you non-"artsy" developers can mod it to spit out XUL?*

*And ditch HTTP for communications. Try Jabber.

-Don

-Don

But now that I've found Open Source Laszlo, programming Flash is quite fun and easy! I can live with that.

-Don

If you're interested in Flex, but don't want to shell out huge wads of cash to Macromedia, check out Laszlo, the system that inspired Flex. Laszlo is now Open Source, and it's a wonderful way to program Flash, without using the horrible proprietary Flash authoring tool! www.laszlosystems.com

An easy to use open source XML weather data base app is avaialable from http://www.laszlosystems.com/demos/weather/. Works great if you have a zip code, outside the US you may be on your own.

One thing I like about Brad Meyers is that he's a strong programmer, as well as an excellent researcher, so he had a first-hand understanding of the real-world issues involved in programming languages and user interface architecture, unlike many academics who talk a lot of theory but never get their hands dirty. Brad Meyers understands where the rubber hits the road, and how important it is to have good tires.

At the time I worked on it, Garnet didn't have pretty graphics like Flash, but the underlying programming system had some advanced features that are sorely lacking from most modern user interface development environments.

Laszlo is an modern open source GUI programming system, with many of Garnet's advanced "natural programming" features like prototypes and constraints. Laszlo currently uses Flash as its virtual machine, but it's a much higher level way to program dynamic interactive web based applications, without using the proprietary Flash authoring tool.

Garnet had a true prototype based OOP system (somewhat like Self), which is great for gui programming, because guis have so many objects that look and behave like each other except for a few little customizations (like the layout, graphical style, data source and call-back behavior).

Garnet also had an automatic constraint system, which enabled you to simply define any attribute as a formula that depend on other attributes, without needing to worry about how and when the values were calculated. Garnet's constraint system automatically figured out the dependences of each formula, and automatically and efficiently recalculated and cached any values that needed to be updated, but only when necessary.

With constraints, you can make a button inside a window, and define its left edge to be ((parent.width - self.width) / 2), and it will automatically remain horizontally centered in the window from then on, without you (the programmer) having to worry about what to do when the parent window's size changes.

Without constraints, you have to manually write all the code that changes the button position whenever the window size changes, which results in code scattered all over the place in different classes and handlers and intermediate objects.

Constraints are much easier to use and more general purpose than resize handlers, springs and struts, complex MVC updating schemes, and other Rube Goldberg devices.

Constraints are especially useful for user interface programming, because they save you from having to write lots of annoying boiler plate and error prone code for handling updates (registering, chasing down dependencies, detecting changes, notifying updates, all happens automatically).

Constraints make GUI programming much easier, but they're also useful anywhere in your program where one value is defined in terms of other values that might change at any time.

Once you've tasted a programming language with constraints, you will not want to go back. Programming without constraints is like writing in machine language: error prone, low level, tedious, inefficient and mind numbing.

Constraints are like structured programming for variables: In the same way that it's better to use loops and conditionals instead of gotos, it's also better to use declarative programming that says what you mean, instead of imperative

One thing I like about Brad Meyers is that he's a strong programmer, as well as an excellent researcher, so he had a first-hand understanding of the real-world issues involved in programming languages and user interface architecture, unlike many academics who talk a lot of theory but never get their hands dirty. Brad Meyers understands where the rubber hits the road, and how important it is to have good tires.

At the time I worked on it, Garnet didn't have pretty graphics like Flash, but the underlying programming system had some advanced features that are sorely lacking from most modern user interface development environments.

Laszlo is an modern open source GUI programming system, with many of Garnet's advanced "natural programming" features like prototypes and constraints. Laszlo currently uses Flash as its virtual machine, but it's a much higher level way to program dynamic interactive web based applications, without using the proprietary Flash authoring tool.

Garnet had a true prototype based OOP system (somewhat like Self), which is great for gui programming, because guis have so many objects that look and behave like each other except for a few little customizations (like the layout, graphical style, data source and call-back behavior).

Garnet also had an automatic constraint system, which enabled you to simply define any attribute as a formula that depend on other attributes, without needing to worry about how and when the values were calculated. Garnet's constraint system automatically figured out the dependences of each formula, and automatically and efficiently recalculated and cached any values that needed to be updated, but only when necessary.

With constraints, you can make a button inside a window, and define its left edge to be ((parent.width - self.width) / 2), and it will automatically remain horizontally centered in the window from then on, without you (the programmer) having to worry about what to do when the parent window's size changes.

Without constraints, you have to manually write all the code that changes the button position whenever the window size changes, which results in code scattered all over the place in different classes and handlers and intermediate objects.

Constraints are much easier to use and more general purpose than resize handlers, springs and struts, complex MVC updating schemes, and other Rube Goldberg devices.

Constraints are especially useful for user interface programming, because they save you from having to write lots of annoying boiler plate and error prone code for handling updates (registering, chasing down dependencies, detecting changes, notifying updates, all happens automatically).

Constraints make GUI programming much easier, but they're also useful anywhere in your program where one value is defined in terms of other values that might change at any time.

Once you've tasted a programming language with constraints, you will not want to go back. Programming without constraints is like writing in machine language: error prone, low level, tedious, inefficient and mind numbing.

Constraints are like structured programming for variables: In the same way that it's better to use loops and conditionals instead of gotos, it's also better to use declarative programming that says what you mean, instead of imperative

Gecko only makes XUL a nonstarter.
Sad but true.

I like your XUL based Amazon demo BTW. Laszlo has one kinda like that here.

Laszlo Systems just announced an open-source cross-platform XML/Javascript based app building tool. That is much more interesting news I would think.

You can do a lot with Flash, and it's a good platform for getting "rich" UIs to clients on multiple platforms without forcing them to install anything. ActiveX and Java web start have less penetration than the Flash player.

I just wish this kind of thing were happening with SVG, SMIL, DOM, and JavaScript rather than Macromedia's proprietary Flash stuff. Macromedia wants to own the new web.

Take what I say here with your usual Slashdot-comment grain of salt because I've taken only a brief look at this thing.

From the download page:

Why Laszlo?

Deliver a new generation of rich Internet applications for today's Web:

• Develop in XML and JavaScript (Try it now!)
• Deploy via any Java servlet container or J2EE application server
• Display in any Web browser enabled with the Flash 5 player
• Open Source platform, free for development and deployment

Okay, so this is just a way to great Flash GUI's. My initial reaction was "BLEH! I can do that already with Flash."

What gave me pause was that this was a impressively sophisticated way to create Flash GUI's using Open Source tech. Macromedia's expensive authoring tool is not required. Everything is driven by XML+JavaScript from the server side.

So, yeah, it's just a server-side Flash generator. It's also one of the more sophisticated Open Source Flash creation tools I've seen yet. So there's that.

Take what I say here with your usual Slashdot-comment grain of salt because I've taken only a brief look at this thing.

From the download page:

Why Laszlo?

Deliver a new generation of rich Internet applications for today's Web:

• Develop in XML and JavaScript (Try it now!)
• Deploy via any Java servlet container or J2EE application server
• Display in any Web browser enabled with the Flash 5 player
• Open Source platform, free for development and deployment

Okay, so this is just a way to great Flash GUI's. My initial reaction was "BLEH! I can do that already with Flash."

What gave me pause was that this was a impressively sophisticated way to create Flash GUI's using Open Source tech. Macromedia's expensive authoring tool is not required. Everything is driven by XML+JavaScript from the server side.

So, yeah, it's just a server-side Flash generator. It's also one of the more sophisticated Open Source Flash creation tools I've seen yet. So there's that.

Well they could use Flash to do the majority of the work, were even a PDA could access the service.

"Unfortunately, this SVG requirement means we're IE only (various Opera bugs prevent it from working) because the SVG only works in the Adobe plugin, which doesn't work in any Mozilla build from the past two years. Last I checked Mozilla's SVG support was inadequate for our needs. That may have changed, but I'm not being paid to check that. :)"

Your post is a bit disjointed, but I'm running Mozilla 1.7b, and the Adobe plugin (3.01) works.

Also if your boss allows it? Look at Adobe's FLEX (uses the latest Flash plugin).

Or if you want XUL and Flash, then this is it (so's this).

Inspiration is everywere

The new era of web-enabled applications is available now and to date is not powered by Microsoft. Using technologies like Laszlo Systems' LPS you can hook a web-deployed desktop app up to any number of XML based web services. This is the whole point of Longhorn and XAML. M$ was scared of Netscape because it made Windows irrelevant, then frightened by Java for the same reason, now they're trying to grab this new space before it matures. Thankfully they're doing too little too late and this genie is out of the bottle. SVG and XUL are cool but won't be good enough in time to stop the juggernaut.
Laszlo has it working now, and the apps run in 98% of the computers and devices hooked to the internet today. All IBM needs to do is add the final piece of the software stack together with DB/2, WebSphere, Linux and the client (Laszlo) then both .Net and Longhorn become totally irrelevant.

As noted elsewhere, you're wrong about the widgets, and you CAN cut and paste text (not images) from Flash unless they turn that off. But I just wanted to show you this link:
http://rr.com

Portals and other sites/apps benefit greatly from Flash due to the way the widgets and/or sections are able to pull data without causing the other widgets/sections (or the entire page) to refresh. In HTML, this would be possible via iFrames and/or DHTML, but your bookmarks issue is just as relevant in that case and the whole "cross browser/cross platform" benefit is lost.

90% of Flash is for your viewing pleasure and nothing else, but there are cases where Flash has real benefits. Crossbrowser, crossplatform data-driven thin client/smart client/Rich Internet Applications (or whatever you wanna call them) can not be done as easily, safely , or efficiently by any other method that I know of.

Also, you may want to check out http://www.laszlosystems.com/

"To switch gears with some thoughts on XUL (and XUL like technologies)... The other day I was reading how interesting XUL was on phpPatterns and using it to build a web-based desktop-like application. The one example people like to point to is that AmazonBrowser. Perhaps the greatest potential for these XUL like languages is for those web features we have a tough time building today. "

Try this, and yes it's THAT easy to create a nice front-end. The only downside is the server-side is written in Java, and I need a beefier machine. The rest of my links are already posted all over the place.

"Note that I originally said "HTML+JS+DOM". I will assume you mean the same thing."

OW! yes.

"Do you mean from a developer's perspective (convenience) or from a machine performance perspective?"

Isomorphic uses XML, and DHTML. Try the examples. Anyway the presentation server makes it easier for the developer because you program at a higher level, and it worry's about the low level stuff (Laszlo systems especially illustrates this). Now when your speaking of machine performance, I'm assuming on the clients? It does rather well on the clients, now on the server is a different matter. On the server most presentation servers are done using Java, and while Java has improved, it's still not a speed deamon. So make certain you have the server hardware to run a complex java app.

His rant sounds like the cry of the luddite. "I don't want to use these fancy schmancy typewriters."

Well even everyone's fav from way back is trying. I've been looking at RIA's from Macromedia's FLEX to Laszlo's PLS and everything inbetween[1]. Things are a changing and Mr Luddite better change with it, or his job will be going to an Indian who isn't afraid of the new fangled technology.

[1] Some of my hardware's a bit behind, but some of the RIA's could be speeded up.

I've posted elsewere about this, but RIA's is what it's about. Macromedia's FLEX is one implimentation. There are others. Even Adobe is putting in their two cents. Interoperability is the one capability RIA's need. The ability for Excel and Word to communicate is important. Will these RIA's talk to each other, or be islands into themselves?

"Personally I have never seen a website I considered "better" for the use of Flash or another proprietary extension."

Then you've not been looking hard enough

Well they certainly could create a nice front-end if they wanted to. Complete with a calendar, a world clock, and the ever present weather pane

Well they certainly could create a nice front-end if they wanted to. Complete with a calendar, a world clock, and the ever present weather pane

Well they certainly could create a nice front-end if they wanted to. Complete with a calendar, a world clock, and the ever present weather pane

Well they certainly could create a nice front-end if they wanted to. Complete with a calendar, a world clock, and the ever present weather pane

Maybe you do take a hit? But look at what you get for your troubles. I'd say it's worth it.

Or you could try this one.

He he, yea it's a demo (among many)
. But it is a very nice calender app which is possible for the poster to make themselves.

Or you could try this one.

He he, yea it's a demo (among many)
. But it is a very nice calender app which is possible for the poster to make themselves.

Laszlo LZX wasn't on the list so I fixed that...
Here is an LZX version :)

Laszlo Systems INC

You'll have to be patient for the XAML (Longhorn) or Macromedia Flex versions since they're a ways off ;)